Every Now and Then
by aristotlethesecound
Summary: Sherlock was not unfamiliar with the drug house and he and Billy were far from strangers despite what they led John to believe.


**AN: I can't be the only person who was curious about Billy Wiggins, so here is my take. Please R&R.**

**Disclaimer: Don't own anything.**

Running a drug den was not what Billy Wiggins thought he would be doing when he started high school but now that he was doing it he was beginning to see the benefits. The people didn't make for good conversation but that didn't really bother Billy, people had never been his style, not even when he was high as a kite and feeling more forgiving of people's stupidity. It might have been his deeply anti-social tendencies that got him into drugs in the first place but he knew that wasn't really true. It had started off as a really great experiment: can I get addicted to drugs and then force myself off of them. The answer had been yes but after proving his point with a sophomore year of sobriety he went back to the drugs. The drug house itself came after he dropped out in his senior year, he had quit the drugs for long enough to get the money from a programing job at a less than reputable establishment before picking up the house for cheap. It turned out to be a good investment; he charged a fee on a stay in the house, one that was usually paid in drugs. It wasn't exactly profit but ohh the variety, so many ways to get high.

Sherlock had been a stroke of luck, talk about an interesting man. Most people got stupider when they got on drugs but he just seemed to get smarter. He had mathematical formula for how much of any given substance he needed to get the best high. He could tell what anyone in the house was using and what the quality was. They got on well because neither of them expected much in the way of conversation. Billy liked to think that they had a mutual respect for each other and that might have been true but they both considered the other a friend or at least some one they liked even if they never admitted it. It came through just a little though, most notably when a very happily high Sherlock leaped up and grabbed the needle that Billy was in the process of poking into his own arm. "Not that drug, I'd rather not investigate your death." Billy didn't see anything wrong with it but he let it go. It was a busy day and he had gotten enough drugs to let that one go, so he just grabbed a different needle and continued on with his high searching. He didn't realise what Sherlock had saved him from until he woke up to the nearly dead body of the man who had given him that hit. Neither of them mentioned it but Billy never asked Sherlock to pay the fee every again.

He wasn't all that surprised when a very angry Mycroft showed up at his house to collect a very high Sherlock around the time when Sherlock became a permanent feature of the drug house but he was surprised when Sherlock did not show up again the next day. It took him about a week to figure out that he was not coming back. Billy kept the drug house and people kept coming and he kept getting high but it didn't seem like quiet so much fun anymore. At one point he dropped his habit in favor of a job at an important bank firm, won with some very fake papers and some laughably rigged references, but this didn't last long either and he was soon back the drugs. He did buy a TV though; he liked to see the cases Sherlock solved. He threw the TV out the window when Sherlock jumped. It only took him a few hours after that to figure it out though. A few hours after that Sherlock was lying in his customary spot with a needle in his vein and a happy smirk on his face. He stayed for only a few days and then was gone again. It was another two years before Billy saw him again.

When Sherlock came back again he was a very different junkie than the one who had left the house years ago. His face was a little harder and he carried a few more scars. This time he did not swagger in, he slunk and rode his high leaning against Billy's side. Billy didn't really care.

Sherlock was on TV after that and did not come back to the house for a while but when he did it was with a wink as a whisper in Billy's ear of _case. _The sadness in Sherlock's eyes was still there and Billy didn't really believe him, but he still found Sherlock a few lines of cocaine and let him curl up against his side. John turned up a few days later. Billy really didn't like him; in fact he would go so far as to say he hated John and not just because the man had sprained his arm. This time Sherlock was gone for only a short while and when he came back it was with an offer, one that Billy took in a second, he took a strange short of pleasure from drugging Mycroft, that man had quiet the resistance, it must have been quiet a habit.

Billy threw another TV out the window after he saw that Sherlock was leaving the country. The press had said it was for a job with the government but Billy knew otherwise. He didn't even smile when he got Sherlock's little present of the quote on quote perfect recipe for a high and the text saying:

_Got to go._

_ -SH_

The house wasn't the same and Billy's high always lacked a warm body pressed up against his side. But every now and then things would be exactly the way they should be with two geniuses lying side by side in the dirt and grime of the drug house.


End file.
